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Brandon Gilles Dies from Long-Covid, Electrical Engineer and Spatial AI Pioneer

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Re: Brandon Gilles Dies from Long-Covid, Electrical Engineer and Spatial AI Pioneer

#31
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of your sources are about acute or active covid infection. As a physician who worked in an ECMO center during the pandemic I am well aware of severe Covid-19 infections and as I stated in my post I tried searching, specifically looking on: UpToDate, Medscape and Google Scholar. I am asking about "long-covid", also called "post covid condition". From Brandon's own description he had what would be classified as "mi…

As someome going through something similar to Brandon but a bit less severe let me plant this thought in your process: The initial covid infection can be a "death blow" for some people, especially if genetically at risk for long-covid (as proven in recent studies) Just like Brandon I had a near fatal covid infection in 2020, I was on 24/7 oxygen for two months and never fully recovered. I've stabilized but it is clea…

> Just like Brandon I had a near fatal covid infection in 2020, I was on 24/7 oxygen for two months and never fully recovered.

He describes that he had mild infection both times and was not hospitalized.

> So if I die in a couple years from Long-Covid, are you going to argue it's not long-covid that killed me or the original covid infection?

I’m not “arguing” anything as this would suggest I have a viewpoint. I’m asking from a medical perspective if anyone knows of a reported case that investigated or described cause of death.

Multi organ failure typically occurs in the ICU in extremely sick people, with an inciting event. I’m not following how ME/CFS leads to that. It could be that I’m uneducated on this, hence the question.

You could swap “COVID” with many other diseases or pathogens and I would be similarly curious. It’s just an unusual progression in a > https://twitter.com/BrandonGilles/with_replies

Thanks for providing this, I read back until early June or so.

It looks like he was taking Difficid, presumably for CDAD. Severe C diff can certainly result in multi organ failure and death. Unusual in an antibiotic naive patient and I’ve not heard of a link with COVID.

He also in another tweet states he has hepatic encephalopathy. Is a sign of liver/end organ dysfunction. HE wasn’t on the linked timeline and is very rare in non-cirrhotics but has happened. This would typically be worked up looking for the cause. It would be medically interesting to see a liver biopsy results. Severe liver dysfunction could also explain multi organ failure and death.

Brandon clearly put in a lot of effort when he was alive to publicly document and detail his journey which has been informative for me. My understanding is that he was hoping to increase awareness and provide resources for others. I’m looking for a report to fill in the gaps between what he has shared and his unfortunate death which is medically very interesting.

This is not, and should not, be a debate about the validity of serious COVID illness or CE/MFS which has been established at this point.

Re: Brandon Gilles Dies from Long-Covid, Electrical Engineer and Spatial AI Pioneer

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While long Covid is an encompassing term, there is symptom overlap between long COVID and ME/CFS. Around 50% of people with long COVID meet the criteria for a diagnosis of ME/CFS. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-023-00904-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-022-00846-2 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fneur.2023.1090... Mild ME/CFS is usually associated with around 50% reduction in daily funct…

Brandon describes slowly improving over ~1.5 years up to April 2023 when he was walking ~0.9 miles/day which so far is concordant with ME/CFS but where it gets discordant is that he progressed to multi-organ failure and death within 3 months. I'm not questioning whether he suffered from ME/CFS but mortality is not reported in the Stanford data or what I've heard described of the syndrome. It's hard to wrap my head ar…

I agree it's hard to speculate: perhaps malnutrition and cardiac failure; maybe sepsis. Here are some relevant links —

Life-Threatening Malnutrition in Very Severe ME/CFS (2021)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8070213/

Caring for the Patient with Severe or Very Severe Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (2021)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8544443/

There are not many mortality studies and few ME patients have had comprehensive autopsies —

Mortality in patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis and chronic fatigue syndrome (2016)

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21641846.2016.1...

Causes of Death Among Patients With Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (2007)

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0739933060080376...

Somewhat harrowing reading is Whitney Dafoe's account of becoming extremely severe —

Extremely Severe ME/CFS—A Personal Account (2021)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8145314/

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